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I'm a retired Lieutenant Fire Fighter / EMT. Prior to working as a Firefighter, I also served in Law Enforcement for several years.

In following with our long line of family military service, dating all the way back to 1776, I'm a US Army veteran (tanker). I served mostly in the M-60A1 and eventually the M1-A1 series tanks. I was a crew member in the Abrams only for a short while.

My Dad was kind of like "Lt. Dan" from the movie Forrest Gump. Fortunately dear old Dad broke our "family curse" of having members killed in every major conflict that the United States has ever had. My Dad was wounded in the Korean War, and thankfully he was not killed. Otherwise I wouldn't be here if he was. I accidentally happened some years later...

My other hobbies include restoring old "Mopar" muscle cars from the late 1960's and early '70s. I also enjoy building aircraft in 1/48 & 1/32 scale, along with 1/35 Armor. I especially like the WW2 stuff. Lately I have been gravitating towards the First World War 1/32 scale aviation kits though...

I built my first model (Revell 1/32 P-40 "Flying Tigers" version) when I was 8 years old. I currently have about 600 kits ( of which about 1/4 are built).

1/48 Revell / Monogram Spitfire Mk.II

Inspired by Dimitry's beautiful 1/72 Airfix Mk1 early Spitfire, I decided to post up one of mine... Here's another "oldie" that I built many years ago. It's nothing fancy, but it is a Spitfire, and that's what matters... These [...]

Year of the Cat Group build updates:

It has been a while since this Group Build was started, back in mid June if memory serves me. It will end in sometime in mid February of 2018 (or thereabouts)... This GB has been very well received. We have had numerous models [...]

How-to article on applying WW1 "Fokker" Streaky Camouflage, or “Fokker Streaking” 101

A lot of us have a few World War 1 Fokker planes in our stash. Some of us have been thinking about just how to replicate the often seen Fokker finish... Here's how I did it... and it's not all that hard once you break it down. The [...]

1/28 Revell Fokker Dr-1 Triplane, Prototype “F-103” as flown by Werner Voss, September 23rd, 1917

Well it's done... Finally. My original intent was to have the build completed and an article posted here on the Imodeler website by September 23rd, 2017. But Mother Nature with Hurricane Irma, and a few other bumps in life's road [...]

1/48 Monogram P-51D Mustang, “Petie 2nd” Lt. Colonel John Meyer, 352nd Fighter Group, Bodney England 1944

Here's a short article about a build that I did a long, long time ago... This one was special to me, since it was my very first attempt at using Bare Metal Foil if memory serves me correctly. It's the old Monogram kit that was re-boxed by [...]

1/48 Monogram Messerschmitt Me-262 A1a, flown by 1. KG 51, WNr. 111625, “9K + FH”

This is a golden oldie that I built shortly after my return to the hobby back in the mid to later 1990's. Back then I didn't have access to the internet, and I mainly relied on books that I had gathered. I frequently followed the build [...]

“Year of the Cat” Group Build, 1/35 Tamiya “Panther” Ausf. D, Sd.Kfz. 171, Kursk summer offensive 1943

Greetings everyone ! I finished this one up a few nights ago... when I finished the Russian KV-1 with bolt on applique armor. This Tamiya German "Panther D" tank has a build thread following this link to the "Year of the [...]

1/35 Tamiya KV-1 Russian tank with Bolt on Armor

This KV-1 was a monster of a tank for it's time... and it caught the Germans by nasty surprise when they first encountered them in combat on the Eastern Front. In fact this tank is probably one of the reasons (along with the smaller / [...]

1/48 Pro Modeler P-47N “Too Big – Too Heavy, Short Snorter” 333rd FS / 318st FG, Ie Shima

Having been inspired by Neil Foster's recent P-47 build (which is excellent), and as a follow up on my last two P-47 postings, as promised, here's my rendition of the "Pro Modeler" kit. I built this kit when it was first [...]

1/48 Revell / Monogram P-47D Thunderbolt “Bonnie”, Major “Bill” Dunham, 460th FS, 348th FG.

Here's the mate to my last P-47 article...I built this plane about 10 years ago. I built this one at the same time as "Fiery Ginger" as flown by Colonel Kearby. These two planes were my first attempt at working out the kinks [...]